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Vote to Leave EU Throws British Labour Party in Crisis

Lawmakers move against Jeremy Corbyn. Conservatives are looking for a new leader of their own.

British parliament London
Westminster Palace in London, England (Unsplash/Matt Milton)
  • Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has lost the support of many of his lawmakers in the wake of Britain’s decision to leave the EU.
  • Angela Eagle is expected to challenge Corbyn. Coming from the soft left of the party, she could be a unifying figure.
  • The Conservatives are looking for a new leader of their own after David Cameron announced he is stepping down as prime minister.
  • Boris Johnson, a top contender, has won the support of Justice Secretary Michael Gove, a fellow Euroskeptic.
  • Other candidates include Stephen Crabb, Sajid Javid and Theresa May.
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Shaun Riordan
Shaun Riordan

UK may take its time to trigger Brexit

While the presidents of both the European Commission and the European Parliament have called on Britain to invoke Article 50 of the EU treaty to start the exit process, it may be a while.

The referendum is only advisory. Parliament, where two-thirds of lawmakers want Britain to remain in the European Union, is sovereign. David Cameron has left the decision to activate Article 50 to his successor. He or she will almost certainly want parliamentary approval. Politicians will be reluctant to ignore or overturn the referendum result, but they may be willing to complicate Brexit by laying down conditions for the negotiations, for example, by insisting on access to the single market. Read more

Shaun Riordan
Shaun Riordan

Corbyn’s position is analogous to Brexit: the metropolitan elite versus the man (and woman) in the street.

Corbyn was elected by the party rank and file against the wishes of lawmakers. In this case, it is the metropolitan elite that is rebelling. Corbyn is hoping to be able to ignore the parliamentary party, which has already adopted a motion of no-confidence, and rely on his support from the unions and party activists. Like the Brexiteers, he may ultimately be disappointed. There are none so fickle as the man and woman in the street. Both Britain’s major parties have earned the wisdom of Edmund Burke’s warnings against direct democracy.

Nick Ottens
Nick Ottens

Johnson has Gove’s support

Boris Johnson will have the support of Justice Secretary Mochael Gove, as expected, if he announces a candidacy for the Conservative Party leadership.

Gove was a leading figure in the leave campaign and would expect a promotion in a Johnson-led government.

Environment Secretary Liz Truss has also come out in support of Johnson, as has Lynton Crosby, the Australian mastermind of the Conservatives’ last general election victory.

Meanwhile on the Labour side, ITV’s political editor, Chris Ship, reports that Angela Eagle is likely to challenge Corbyn and, according to George Eaton at the New Statesman, so are Yvette Cooper and Dan Jarvis.

Eagle, from the soft left of the party, could be a unifying figure. Cooper and Jarvis are more centrist and would mark a repudiation of the Corbyn line.

Nick Ottens
Nick Ottens

A smart right-wing take on Britain’s vote to leave the EU comes from Yuval Levin in National Review.

He writes that an assertive cosmopolitan elite has conspired in recent years with a weakening of traditional communities in Europe to create “an intense desire for a reassertion of control and authority from the bottom up.”

This resurgent national yearning is in one way or another growing in most Western societies. Many things could be said about it, good and bad, but one is surely that it strongly suggests that globalism is not the future and nationalism is not the past.

Read more

Nick Ottens
Nick Ottens

Strong words from Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary: It is a “Trotskyist fantasy” that Jeremy Corbyn can carry on as Labour leader, he tells Sky News, whom he compares to George Lansbury, the pacifist 1930s party leader who was forced to resign in disgrace.

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